Judy Heumann passed away today. She was an amazing disability advocate who was on the forefront of disability activism for literally decades. She founded Disabled in Action, lobbied for independent living for disabled people, partipated in the longest sit in of a federal building in the United States with the 504 sit in, worked with multiple presidential administrations to improve disability rights, and so much more. I cannot stress how much she did for disabled people and how much she’ll be missed. May her memory be a blessing.
[image description: a black and white photo of Judy Heumann during the 504 protests in 1977. She has short hair and glasses and is wearing a “Sign 504” sticker on her jacket. She is speaking into a microphone]
Judy Heumann is widely considered the mother of the disability rights movement. She has been fighting since the very beginning, and she never stopped.
in the US an “amber alert” is used to mean a child in the area has been kidnapped so this makes it sound like the British government is now snatching kids and stealing their blood
If you’re not keeping up, Cartoon Network sold off most of its original programming over the last few years to run exclusively on HBO Max, but after a merger with Discovery, HBO has taken them all down, including those that were still in production, for what is long story short a big tax write-off.
And it’s not a simple matter of them just airing or streaming somewhere else now. It’s a very complicated issue of rights and contracts and money but essentially it’s very possible that these shows will never be available again in official capacity and their creators will never see another penny from them again, either. Some completed episodes may also be lost media, indefinitely.
For a couple of series, such as Mao Mao and Infinity Train, Cartoon Network has gone back and scrubbed all tweets, youtube clips or other mention of the series existence, confirming they likely no longer have the rights to take them anywhere else.
The tweet today by the art director of Tig N’ Seek made me saddest.
A lot of people this week have simply given up on their industry careers, seeing years of their life’s work just vanish into a corporate vault overnight. Being able to point to your work on a streaming service had apparently even become a pretty critical part of the portfolios they now rely on to get new jobs.
Streaming media went from an optimistic new frontier to even worse than cable TV so suddenly.
